# Civil Assistance

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**Civil Assistance** was a British far-right movement in the 1970s, purporting to be a non-governmental civil defence group. It was a voluntary group that aimed to break any planned [general strike](/source/General_strike). It was founded in 1974 by [Walter Walker](/source/Walter_Walker_(British_Army_officer)), Commander in Chief of [NATO](/source/NATO) forces in Northern Europe from 1969 to 1972. It was a spin-off of [Unison](/source/Unison_(civil_defence_organisation)), a civil defence group founded in 1973 by George Kennedy Young, a former deputy director of MI6.[1]

In August 1974 Walker claimed that Civil Assistance had 100,000 members.[1] This provoked the then [Labour](/source/Labour_Party_(UK)) [Defence Secretary](/source/Secretary_of_State_for_Defence), [Roy Mason](/source/Roy_Mason), to interrupt his holiday to release a statement complaining of a 'near [fascist](/source/Fascist) groundswell'. Then on 25 February 1975 Walker addressed a meeting of around a hundred Civil Assistance members at [St Lawrence Jewry](/source/St_Lawrence_Jewry) in the City of London. The [Communist](/source/Communist) newspaper the *[Morning Star](/source/Morning_Star_(British_newspaper))* claimed to have infiltrated the meeting and to have counted one [general](/source/General), nine [colonels](/source/Colonel_(United_Kingdom)) and six [brigadiers](/source/Brigadier) and seven other former officers. Walker supposedly made a speech calling the British [Left](/source/Left-wing) a '[cancer](/source/Cancer)', organisers of political strikes 'traitors' and [Labour](/source/Labour_Party_(UK)) MPs subversives. Walker claimed Civil Assistance would 'act' against these and that its members had 'excellent relationships with chief constables'.

Shortly before this speech [Margaret Thatcher](/source/Margaret_Thatcher) became Leader of the [Conservative Party](/source/Conservative_Party_(UK)) and Civil Assistance gradually faded from the media.[2]

## References

1. Sandbrook, Dominic (2013). *Seasons in the sun : the battle for Britain, 1974-1979*. London, England: Penguin. ISBN 9781846146275.

1. ["Obituary: General Sir Walter Walker"](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/gurkha-obituaries/1337219/General-Sir-Walter-Walker.html). *Daily Telegraph*. 13 August 2001. [Archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20100530232551/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/gurkha-obituaries/1337219/General-Sir-Walter-Walker.html) 30 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 12 April 2022.

### Books

- *Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile's Hidden History* by Andy Beckett (Faber and Faber, 2003) ISBN 0-571-21547-5

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Civil Assistance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Assistance) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Assistance?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.